[Development] ChangeLogs

[Jedrzej Nowacki]

On Thursday 17. January 2013 18.25.29 Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 04:05:40PM +0100, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> > two more approaches have been previously proposed:
> hjk suggested yet another approach: use gerrit itself to collect the
> changelog entries. after some thinking, i came up with this process:
> - add a ChangeLog: line to the commit message as in the previous
>   proposal
> - the commit-msg hook extracts and removes that line; the post-commit
>   hook re-adds that line via git-notes
> - change is pushed as usual - with git-gpush (which gets extended to
>   push the notes as well)
> - gerrit receives the commit and notes, creates a change, and attaches
>   the changelog entry as an additional attribute to it
> - up to now, everything was an optional extension - to save the
>   contributor opening the gerrit page to add a changelog entry
> - but of course, it would be possible to edit the changelog entry in the
>   gui
> - the changelog entry would be approved together with the actual change.
>   whether this would happen in a separate review category, with the
>   stage/submit button, or something yet different, i don't know.
> - the system would require explicit action to approve the lack of a
>   changelog entry
> - for final storage, changelogs would be probably re-added as git
>   notes again
> - automated entry collection at release time would follow as with
>   in-commit-message ChangeLog: entries
> 
> the advantages of the system:
> - there is no "media break" like with a wiki or jira, as we use git and
>   gerrit anyway
> - the commit messages themselves are not "polluted"
> - the changelog entries can be modified without amending and re-pushing
>   the commit, thus not invalidating the actual review
> - it would be also possible to let the reviewers write the changelog
>   entry (which would then have to be approved by the contributor or
>   another reviewer in turn)
> - we could seamlessly switch from the in-commit-message ChangeLog:
>   variant, as nothing would change in the manual steps at commit
>   creation time (provided the notes-for-submission stuff would be
>   implemented right away)
> the downside is rather obvious:
> - this needs to be implemented in gerrit (unless somebody already did
>   something similar)
> 
> this is just a "step 2". it is in so far relevant, as the possibility of
> adding this later may be considered an endorsement for the original
> ChangeLog: variant.
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I like the approach, I'm just afraid that nobody will work on patching gerrit. 
It means that in real live we will end-up with the original ChangeLog variant. 
It seems that it is the best solution anyway. 

Cheers,
  Jędrek